The snowjob is in full swing as the business types who see their pockets lined with $30 million dollars of indebtedness to the public, line up to sing the praises of the mammoth Coast Hotel Project and to dangle carrots in front of citizens who responsibly want City government to have a sufficient revenue stream. This dog and pony show glosses over real concerns that the Sentinel would rather the public not spend much time thinking about. This Sentinel editorial leaves out a lot of these concerns. I have appended them to the front of the editoral from Sunday's paper.

On January 25, local Attorney Emily Malone addressed the Santa Cruz City Council on behalf of the Board of the Clear View Court Home Owners Association.
(length of video 3:27 / size of file 4.2 MB)

Back in approximately 1990, I bought a $3 zine entitled "Beyond Blackberries," at an anarchist pizza shop called "Morningtown," in Seattle. "Beyond Blackberries" is a zine that catalogued the nut and fruit trees on public land in the Seattle area. The zine includes information about parks department contacts to ask about pesticide spraying in the area, etc. You can see the same line of thinking going on with the Tree People in Los Angeles, who plant fruit and nut trees in poorer parts of the city, and also facilitate community workshops on how to maintain the trees so they will live long and bear as much fruit as possible. There is no reason that cities have to be sterile, void of trees with fruits and nuts. You could even plant a medicinal herb garden on public land as has been done on the University of Washington campus. I have no idea why urban areas were designed to look like prisons, with so much concrete and so many fences, but trees can really put life back into these concrete canyons. Imagine walking down the street and smelling lemons, or being able to grab apples at all the local parks. Livability needs to be part of our urban vision, and trees make everything more livable. They lower the temperature of our cities, and if nut and fruit trees are planted, they can feed the hungry.

Someone just gave me a bike. It was really amazing riding a bike, after not riding one in a long time. I have been doing a lot of walking and riding buses over the last many years, not bike riding. A bike to me is more than a recreational toy, it is something that will increase my quality of life greatly, on a daily basis. The bike will cut down on my travel times considerably. Many people do not realize that not only do you spend extended journeys on buses due to stopping every few blocks for passengers en route, but if bus transfers are involved, that overlay is time consuming as well, both coming and going. Having a bike now means I can ride my bike to the bus stop, eliminating 10 minutes there, then put the bike on the bus bike rack and ride for an hour into Seattle. In the past, I would then have to transfer to one or more buses to get where I was going. Now, I can just unload my bike once in Seattle, and ride to those destinations, taking only one round trip bus ride, versus the previous three roundtrip bus rides. The bike makes going to the library and grocery store easier, as the bike can carry the weight of juice or books, rather than me. It seems many, if not most, middle class garages are filled with one bike per family member, even though the family uses the SUV more than the fleet of bikes. I think we should have *bike drives* for the poor, like we have food or clothing drives.

EF! North America organizes two gatherings a year: the Summer Round River Rendezvous, which is more of a jamboree and orientation to EF!, and the Organizers’ Conference and Winter Rendezvous- a strategy and organizing event. We hope that folks will arrive on Friday afternoon and stay until Monday’s day of action.